I haven't yet, although I do planning on taking a good look at it. I was given a nice book on the languages of Middle Earth and it is quite fascinating.<br /><br />Apparently, he assigned English to the language of the storytellers, so the hobbits' language, or the common tongue is represented by English. Then almost all of the other languages are ones that are analogous to English... i.e. the language of Rohan, from which a great deal of the common tongue is derived, is actually Old English, and the language from which a great deal of common is assimilated is one of those elvish languages which is analogous to Latin. Some of the other languages, which are intended to be related but not derived from are represented by Gothic are Scandinavian. Very interesting linguist that Tolkien.

I honestly can't see myself spending time learning non-existant languages... It's one thing to do "dead" languages because there is an abundance of real and valuable literature to be discovered in them... but to learn a whole language just for the sake of a few books... no thanks ;)

That is my view as well, but he was a very intelligent man and I think he must be worth a look for his efforts and linguistic prowess.<br /><br />Not to mention that many people have learned them and speak them for kicks (similarly to other synthetic languages like Esperanto).

Yes, I saw many people investing horrible efforts in making tengwar fonts, developing typesetting system for TeX, composing poems, doing calligraphy, and making contact with people across continents to order a wedding ring with elvish inscriptions. But my basic attitude is like that of klewlis. I just turned around to restart greek.<br /><br />But someday I might try to learn "Clockwork Orange"-english, for kicks. <br />You who live in the sea of english might have no problem understanding it, but I couldn't catch up what they were gibberishing.

But someday I might try to learn "Clockwork Orange"-english, for kicks.

<br /><br /> <br /><br />It's not that hard. Just read the book about 3 times and watch the movie occasionally and you will start speaking it in no time at all. It should come easy seeing as how it really is just English, with a bit of Russian, Spanish, Cockney, and who knows what else thrown in.

Well, I do know a little Elvish, although I refuse to watch the movies, for my own reasons. But I've loved Tolkien and his works for years, long before the movies came out. The languages are really rather complex, although based on English (are you sure about that? I don't mean the movie languages, I mean the book languages...), and I enjoy playing with them. I am the only person I know who has read, understood, and enjoyed the Silmarillion...<br /><br />So, yes, I do speak them a little bit.

Tolkien, it must be remembered, was One Of Us. A classicist. Actually, a philologist. All the books he wrote were to give a history to his language creations. He knew full well what history does to a language.<br /><br />Ardalambion is the very best web resource for Tolkien linguistics. There is also a huge Quenya primer.<br /><br />Quenya is supposed to look like a cross between Finnish and Latin. Dead, learned language for scholarly Elves.<br /><br />Sindarin is supposed to look like Welsh. That's the language used day to day, and in the films.<br /><br />As a language creator myself, I consider Tolkien something of a patron saint, even if I find his fiction a bit too regressive for comfort.

[quote author=Keesa link=board=6;threadid=618;start=0#5771 date=1063280676]<br />Well, I do know a little Elvish, although I refuse to watch the movies, for my own reasons. <br />[/quote]<br /><br /> <br /><br />I would really like to hear those reasons. The movies are splendid.

I haven't tried to learn any Elvish, though I do know a few people who have learned it and quite a few who tried to learn it but failed .<br />I don't think I will ever try to learn the lanugage myself, although I really like the books (The Hobbit was in fact the first book I ever read).<br />At the moment I'm reading the Silmarillion (loads of people have read it here... maybe it's not a very common book in the US. Some americans were moaning in a forum some time ago, that they were having trouble finding the book, but that was before the films... ::))

[quote author=Emma_85 link=board=6;threadid=618;start=0#5834 date=1063311403]<br />I don't think I will ever try to learn the lanugage myself, although I really like the books (The Hobbit was in fact the first book I ever read).<br /><br />Really? I didn't know about the Hobbit when I first learned to read; I was eight before a friend loaned me her copy, and it was about another year before I could find the other books. (There are actually six books, seven including The Hobbit; it's not a trilogy, and was never meant to be. I suspect it was meant to be, in format, more like the seven-book "Chronicles of Narnia," which was written by his close friend C. S. Lewis. (Another classicist, and very good with languages!) The Chronicles of Narnia were the first books I ever read-the first of any length, anyway.) <br /><br /><br />At the moment I'm reading the Silmarillion (loads of people have read it here... maybe it's not a very common book in the US. Some americans were moaning in a forum some time ago, that they were having trouble finding the book, but that was before the films... ::))<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I found my copy-rather, my sister found it and bought it for me-before the films, but it was more of a "happened to find it" sort of thing than actually looking for it.

I would love to learn Quenya, but for some reason I stopped and haven't learned anything for months. It is a very beautiful language. I think the more languages people create, the more linguistic discoveries we find, don't you think? <br /><br />hey William, you said that you create languages. Would you mind sharing with us what kind of languages you create? I tried to (influenced by Tolkien by the way) create a language but I sucked and eventually gave up (my picture is actually of the writing system for the world I created).

[quote author=Ptahhotep link=board=6;threadid=618;start=0#5927 date=1063391325]<br />I would love to learn Quenya, but for some reason I stopped and haven't learned anything for months. It is a very beautiful language. I think the more languages people create, the more linguistic discoveries we find, don't you think? <br />[/quote]<br /><br />Mostly what you learn is that somewhere, someone is speaking a natural language doing the same crazy thing you thought you were inventing. It's amazing the things some languages encode. Some languages, for example, encode the color of the direct object for certain verbs with an infix to the verb.<br /><br />

<br />hey William, you said that you create languages. Would you mind sharing with us what kind of languages you create? I tried to (influenced by Tolkien by the way) create a language but I sucked and eventually gave up (my picture is actually of the writing system for the world I created).<br />

<br /><br />My magnum opus, alluded to somewhere else in the vast fields of textkit conversations, is Vaior. Here's a very small bit of Aesop:<br /><br />

<br /><br />So, there is a clear debt to Tolkien in terms of phonesthetics. I once described the language as being like Esperanto invented by speaker of Classical Greek who lived among the Inuit and thought Quenya sounded nice. <br /><br />Someone who knows classical Greek will see many familiar things in the grammar: several verb moods, postpositive particles, a love of participle phrases. Other things will come as shock, mostly in terms of word construction and derivation, but it reflects a great deal of Greek.<br /><br />Once I decided to devote myself more seriously to Greek, Vaior development slowed down. One friend of mine is a little irritated about this, since he thinks the word-building capabilites of Vaior are cool.<br /><br />I'll be sticking with Greek, I think, for the forseeable future.

[quote author=Episcopus link=board=6;threadid=618;start=15#5969 date=1063454831]<br />:o You made your own language? That's insane! Incredible...<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Not really. Well, perhaps insane. But not incredible: do a google on "conlang" or "constructed language" and you will find quite a lot of people share the hobby. The guy at http://www.zompist.com/ has made many, many languages under the "Virtual Verduria" link.

I once tried to build a alphabet for all languages.<br />It started from the depicting of the phonetic organs - the oral cavity, tongue, nasal symbols, that represented the positions and natures of the phonetic values. And with some simplification and cursive styles it ended up with 64 characters set. but with lack of linguistic and phonetic samples it turned out far behind a all-tongue-ish. <br /><br />

Quote from: Mingshey<br />I once tried to build a alphabet for all languages.<br /><br />This should come close (although it's not complete either):<br />http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html<br />It's the alphabet of the International phonetic association. <br /><br />Ingrid

[quote author=ingrid70 link=board=6;threadid=618;start=15#5979 date=1063484890]<br />Quote from: Mingshey<br />I once tried to build a alphabet for all languages.<br /><br />This should come close (although it's not complete either):<br />http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html<br />It's the alphabet of the International phonetic association. <br /><br />Ingrid<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Yes, I met the table before.<br />An afterthought: many nations have phonemes for different sets of phonetic values. That adds the difficulty in trying to make an all-tonguish alphabet. japanese and korean 'r' is close to 'd' or 't' in english in the position of the tongue. The 't' in 'data' as spoken by americans is heard as 'r' in korea. Thus if universal phonetic symbol is used, there's always a problem in consistent transcription.<br />

[quote author=Episcopus link=board=6;threadid=618;start=15#5969 date=1063454831]<br />:o You made your own language? That's insane! Incredible...<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Neither insane nor incredible, Episcopus, just very, very time-consuming. <br /><br />I also tried my hand at a language; it goes with one of my fantasy stories. I was also influenced by Tolkien (I call it Elquet, although that probably won't be it's name when (if?) I get it finished...). When I started it, however, I was very young, and had a very poor idea of grammatical principles, and vocabulary was tricky for me...I took to jotting down pretty-sounding groups of letters whenever I stumbled across them, to use for building words. (Okay, so maybe it is insane. ;D) <br /><br />I've been trying for some time to work out an alphabet for it, but the letters I have right now are too complicated to write easily, and I have a different letter for every sound I use in the language, including a different one for long "a", short "a", etc., which seemed like a good idea at the time, but now seems like overkill. <br /><br />I don't have any pictures on the computer, or I could show you... <br /><br />Serena ravlia tuo sere, le chav Ellon ex accro tuo le eri tuo.<br /><br />Traditional Elquet farewell. (I used to use that for my email signature.) <br /><br />Keesa<br /><br />Funny-when I posted it and looked closely at it, it looks as though it has heavy Latin influence, too, but at the time I knew no Latin and almost no French.

[quote author=Emma_85 link=board=6;threadid=618;start=15#5973 date=1063457445]<br />You planning on inventing a history to go with that language and then writing a book? <br />[/quote]<br /><br />Nope. I've never really been interested in the conculture aspect of language creation. As a result most of my languages encode my own worldview pretty heavily. Not a single word relating to religion appeared in Vaior until a friend pointed out the absence of vocabulary to even talk about the subject.

Mine doesn't have the words to discuss religion because I haven't gotten that far in it yet, but like yours, it incoporates my own views...the sample above says, "Farewell wherever you fare, and may Ellon [God] be with you and guide you." <br /><br />

[quote author=klewlis link=board=6;threadid=618;start=0#5803 date=1063290399]<br />[quote author=Keesa link=board=6;threadid=618;start=0#5771 date=1063280676]<br />Well, I do know a little Elvish, although I refuse to watch the movies, for my own reasons. <br />[/quote]<br /><br /> <br /><br />I would really like to hear those reasons. The movies are splendid.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Klewlis...have you read the books? The movies are horrible compared with them, I have to think of them as two different things to even stand what Hollywood has done...<br /><br />As far as Elvish goes, I can say a few things, like Ellen Sila Lumen Omentievo(sp) and Namarie(sp) and I can quote anything spoken in elvish in the movies.

I thought there were some important parts missing the in the first movie, but I liked it a lot anyway. It's much better in the extended super DVD version, though. Now I'm just waiting for the extended version of the 2nd one and I hope they treated Faramir better in that version.

[quote author=Emma_85 link=board=6;threadid=618;start=15#6285 date=1064004134]<br />I thought there were some important parts missing the in the first movie, but I liked it a lot anyway. It's much better in the extended super DVD version, though. Now I'm just waiting for the extended version of the 2nd one and I hope they treated Faramir better in that version.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />They might add up some of the missing parts, but I don't expect they would change the characters. <br />Look how Pippin is treated as an all-thumbs dummy dumb.

I read most of LOTR, but I didn't bother trying to understand Tolkien's languages. I get the feeling that I missed the whole point. Perhaps I will look at Quenya sometime. <br /><br />I also think the movies suck, but that's another topic.

[quote author=mingshey link=board=6;threadid=618;start=30#6415 date=1064195015]<br />[quote author=Emma_85 link=board=6;threadid=618;start=15#6285 date=1064004134]<br />I thought there were some important parts missing the in the first movie, but I liked it a lot anyway. It's much better in the extended super DVD version, though. Now I'm just waiting for the extended version of the 2nd one and I hope they treated Faramir better in that version.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />They might add up some of the missing parts, but I don't expect they would change the characters. <br />Look how Pippin is treated as an all-thumbs dummy dumb.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I agree! They had no right to do that, he's a hobbit, and most hobbits are smart-and he's one of the smartest!

mingshey: I never tried to learn Quenya or Sindarin, but did learn the Tengwar, and used it to transliterate notes for myself on school desktops (in pencil), which sometimes came in useful… (Those of you who are still in school, please don’t emulate my bad example!) I haven’t seen any of the Jackson movies. The IPA has diacritics for creating “narrow” transcriptions of speech, so that information on lip-rounding, tongue location, &c. can be specified to the desired degree of detail.

Keesa: I read and enjoyed the Silmarillion, but I can’t be sure that I understood everything that Professor Tolkien wanted to communicate. Yes, the distinction between “book” and “volume” is often blurred.

I'm glad someone started to reply on an old post like this one. It's funny; I go back and enjoy reading really old posts. It's interesting to read all the original gansta's very early postings here. I wanted to bring some back, but just thought it was awkward to do so. Anyway, I’m more interested in learning about his language influences and the process of creating his languages. The main language influences that I read were Finnish and Welsh. But people bring up Gothic, Old Norse, and even Latin? I read that Latin only had an “ocular” resemblance to one of his elvish languages. I realize he was a philologist and there probably were subtle influences from the languages that he studied, but I don't know how much influence they had on his elvish languages... Is there a book or article that elaborates more about his language creation process/technique and his linguistic influences on his main fictional languages?

Last edited by 1%homeless on Tue Mar 02, 2004 9:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

1%homeless wrote:Is there a book or article that elaborates more about his language creation process/technique and his linguistic influences on his main fictional languages?

I remember seeing a book somewhere on Tolkien's languages; I think it was one of those compilations of notes by his son. Anyway, it had a fairly straightforward title like The Languages of Tolkien or somesuch.
You might wish to try looking up keywords on Amazon...

Just did a search now and can't find anything by Christopher other than middle-earth history and such. I did find the book you mentioned though. The review in amazon mentioned a book by Christopher as well, so I think it does exisit. Oh well, will dig further later. Thanks.